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It has been fascinating to see top Trump administration officials called before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and get reamed out by members for the data breach that involved Trump administration officials adding a journalist to a Signal chat unintentionally, and then leaking the plan for military strikes in Yemen to him.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard refused throughout the hearing to admit that she was a part of the chat, even thought other witnesses from the Trump administration confirmed that they participated, and someone with the initials TG was in the chat.
Gabbard also claimed on three occasions that there was no classified data leaked in the chat.
Sen. Angus King wasn’t buying it.
Video of King:
Sen. King said:
Director Gabbard, I didn’t intend to get into the Jeffrey Goldberg story, but something you said has puzzled me. According to open source reporting at 11:44 on the morning of March 15th secretary heads put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets the weapons we were gonna be using, attack sequences and timing.
And yet you’ve testified that nothing in that tech, in that chain was classified. Wouldn’t that be classified? What if that had been made public that morning before the attack took place?
Gabbard answered, “Senator, I can attest to the fact there were no classified or intelligence equities. Were included in that chat group at any time, and I defer.”
King asked, “So the attack, sequencing and timing and weapons and targets you, you don’t consider to, should have been classified?”
Gabbard responded, “I defer to the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council on that question. “
Sen. King said:
You’re the head of you’re the head of the intelligence community and you’re supposed to know about classifications.
So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified. I’ll follow up on Senator Yen’s question if that’s the case. Please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion, it’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.
The current Director of National Intelligence, according to her, doesn’t know about classifications.
The bigger issue here is that the Director of National Intelligence apparently has no issues with the idea of lying to Congress and if the DNI will potentially lie to Congress repeatedly, she probably wouldn’t lose any sleep over lying to the American people.
As Pete Buttigieg said, “These people cannot keep America safe.”
When they have to answer to Congress, they seem to have no qualms about lying.
This is a national security crisis that Donald Trump created and Senate Republicans rubber stamped in confirmation hearings.
What do you think about Sen. King’s exchange with Tulsi Gabbard? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
